And the final presenter in this session at the AANZCA 2025 conference is Gabrielle Princessa Wulaningatri, who returns us to the analysis of polarisation in Australian news media coverage. Ideological polarisation in the general population tends to correlate with attitudes towards climate action; such public polarisation is likely to also be reflected at least to some extent in news coverage of this topic.
The key focus here is on value framing in news media coverage; different values (from self-determination to traditionalism) also tend to be aligned with different ideological positionings. The study examined the presence of such values in the Australian news coverage of climate movements in 2024, coding articles for various values.
Advocacy groups were especially strongly represented in such coverage, and support for climate action in general and climate movements in particular, as well as opposition to fossil fuels, were especially prominent. These positions were unevenly distributed across left-, centre-, and right-leaning news outlets, though. Key values associated with such positions were in the area of universalism: in particular, environmental protection and social justice.
Where climate change coverage showed diverging agendas (opposition to fossil fuels vs. support for nuclear power), the focus in coverage of climate movements was more unified. Polarisation here surrounded individual movements themselves, and this overshadowed the specific environmental solutions being discussed.
